"Me!" scornfully, "Why I am Delia Hobart—'Diamond Del,' they call me."
"Yes, but that is not what you mean; that gives you no such right as you claim. You are Hobart's daughter then?"
"I didn't say so, Mister Captain West. I told you my moniker, that's all. Jim here brought me up, but he ain't no father to me, and his wife ain't my mother. It took me a while to find that out, but I got the thing straight at last. I saw then just what those two were driving at; first I didn't take no particular interest in the scheme; then I got to thinking until finally I hated that soft, downy thing; damn her, she'd robbed me, and I had a right to my share even if I had to steal it."
"What soft, downy thing?"
"Natalie Coolidge! Bah, I went out to see her once. Jim took me and we hid in the garden; and when I came back I was raving mad. Lord, why should that little idiot have everything while half the time I was hungry?"
"You mean you envied her?"
"Envied, hell! Didn't I have a right? Wasn't she my twin sister? Didn't she have it all, and I nothing?"
He gasped for breath at this sudden revelation. Then he laughed, convinced it could not be possible.
"Who told you that?"
"Why, don't you believe it? Has she never said a word about it to you?"